us, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood
have been known to go at night to the place and practise some forms in
order to persuade the animal, when caught, or when he shall perceive the
bait, that it was not laid by them, or with their consent. They talk of a
place in the country where the tigers have a court and maintain a regular
form of government, in towns, the houses of which are thatched with
women's hair. It happened that in one month seven or eight people were
killed by these prowling beasts in Manna district; upon which a report
became current that fifteen hundred of them were come down from
Passummah, of which number four were without understanding (gila), and
having separated from the rest ran about the country occasioning all the
mischief that was felt. The alligators also are highly destructive, owing
to the constant practice of bathing in the rivers, and are regarded with
nearly the same degree of religious terror. Fear is the parent of
superstition, by ignorance. Those two animals prove the Sumatran's
greatest scourge. The mischief the former commit is incredible, whole
villages being often depopulated by them, and the suffering people learn
to reverence as supernatural effects the furious ravages of an enemy they
have not resolution to oppose.

The Sumatrans are firmly persuaded that various particular persons are
what they term betuah (sacred, impassive, invulnerable, not liable to
accident), and this quality they sometimes extend to things inanimate, as
ships and boats. Such an opinion, which we should suppose every man might
have an opportunity of bringing to the test of truth, affords a
humiliating proof of the weakness and credulity of human nature, and the
fallibility of testimony, when a film of prejudice obscures the light of
the understanding. I have known two men, whose honesty, good faith, and
reasonableness in the general concerns of life were well established, and
whose assertions would have weight in transactions of consequence: these
men I have heard maintain, with the most deliberate confidence and an
appearance of inward conviction of their own sincerity, that they had
more than once in the course of their wars attempted to run their weapons
into the naked body of their adversary, which they found impenetrable,
their points being continually and miraculously turned without any effort
on the part of the orang betuah: and that hundreds of instances of the
like nature, where the invulnerable